Jesuit Missions St Ignatius Loyola

The Society of Jesus is a religious order of men (priests and brothers) in the Roman Catholic Church founded by St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556). In the sixteenth century, the Church found itself in need of reconciliation, reform and renewal. Ignatius and his nine companions (united as "Friends in the Lord") began a new mode of religious life which was to be radically apostolic independent of the monastic tradition. Putting themselves at the disposal of the Church and the Pope, they began to win souls for Christ by preaching and living the Gospel.

The Society of Jesus is today the largest congregation of male religious in the world. All are shaped by their experience of The Spiritual Exercises which they receive as novices in the form of a retreat lasting thirty days. Jesuits can be priests or brothers, and do an enormous variety of works.

"What is it to be a Jesuit? It is to know that one is a sinner, yet called to be a companion of Jesus as Ignatius was: Ignatius, who begged the Blessed Virgin to 'place him with her Son', and who then saw the Father himself ask Jesus, carrying his cross, to take the pilgrim into his company."

(General Congregation 32 of the Society of Jesus, 1975 )

St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus

A French artillery man changed the life of Inigo Lopez de Loyola. As he fought to defend the town of Pamplona from a French onslaught, one of his legs was shattered by a cannon ball. In his autobiography Ignatius describes the excruciating treatment, the 'butchery' he suffered from the surgeons as they set and reset the leg, pulling and sawing the at the smashed bone. The man who so prided himself on his appearance was left with a permanent limp, and his dream of a career as a handsome knight lay in ruins.

For many, this harrowing incident is their introduction to the life of Ignatius. I still remember feeling queasy when I first heard it in a school assembly. What happened to him next is less spectacular but of fundamental importance: his discovery of the principles of discernment, while daydreaming during a very boring convalescence. Deprived of the romances which were his staple reading, and with the only books in the house being lives of the saints and of Christ, he found himself drawn into a new kind of chivalry, thinking about imitating these saints rather than the heroic knights. He became a "pilgrim".

On one level, it is as simple as that, a story anyone can relate to. Anyone who has ever had to cope with debilitating illness or injury, or ever felt the attractiveness of a role model, or ever experienced the anguished disappointment when life once again fails to live up to its promise, or anyone who has ever made a false start or run into a dead end. At one point in his journey this intense turbulence of the heart even drove Ignatius to the brink of suicide.

During this pilgrimage period of is life, Ignatius thought of God as his schoolmaster, patiently coaxing a willing but dull and slow pupil. An early example of the pilgrim's misguided zeal is the incident, on the road to Manresa, where he nearly stabbed a Moslem, who, in his opinion had not shown enough respect to the Mother of God.

His attempts to acquire the academic learning he needed as a mature student were painful, while in Salamanca his spiritual insights and tuition drew unwelcome attention from the Inquisition. He travelled a great deal; but the dream of living and working in the Holy Land, an obsession both for Ignatius and for his first companions, ultimately went unrealised.

And yet, above all, through this holy meandering there is the steady cumulative force of Ignatius' mystical graces Two examples will suffice, firstly the stupendous vision by the fiver Cardoner at Manresa:

And as he was seated there, the eyes of his understanding began to be opened; not that he saw some vision, but understanding and knowing many things with an enlightenment so strong that all things seemed new to him. One cannot set out the particular things he understood then, though there were many: only that he received a great clarity in his understanding, such that in the whole course of his life... he does not think, gathering together all the helps he has had from God and all the things he has come to know (even if he joins them all into one), that he has ever attained so much as on that single occasion.

Then, by contrast, the very specific and moving vision he records at the chapel of La Storta:

And being one day in a church some miles before arrival in Rome, and making prayer, he sensed such a change in his soul, and he saw so clearly that God the Father was putting him with Christ, his Son, that he would not have the wilfulness to have any doubt about this; it could only be that God the Father was purring him with his Son.

Imitation again! And the reason why there could never be any other name for this group of friends in the Lord than the "Companions of Jesus"; the tremendous grace of the La Storta vision, of being invited to accompany and serve Jesus, was to be interpreted collectively. In fact, the mystical experiences of Ignatius have radically shaped the life of each and every Jesuit who makes the Spiritual Exercises and who is presented with the challenge of the Jesuit Constitutions;even where such a shaping may carry little by way of a recognisable external form.

There is much more to be said, but I will pick just two characteristics of the work of Ignatius which have particularly modern resonances for those seeking to follow him as a pilgrim today. Firstly, the concern, especially in our early history, that Jesuits should be involved very directly in working with most vulnerable groups in society; what we today call an "option for the poor". Whether this meant working at great personal risk in hospitals, such as they were, or with prostitutes, or with uneducated children (a concern which especially applied to those normally engaged in the intellectual or academic life) or undertaking overseas missions, this instinctive pull towards those most in need has always been authentically Jesuit.

But there is also the attraction (sometimes fatal) of the power of institutions, whether political or ecclesial. Colleges, universities, the courts of kings and emperors, have all been privileged sites of Jesuit activity. Above all, Ignatius' robust defence of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, and the institution of the Papacy in particular, is extraordinary given the abysmal state of the sixteenth-century Christendom. Such a fundamental confidence in the health end efficacy of institutions does not chime easily with our present-day culture of autonomy, our systematic suspicion of all traditions and authorities. For this reason alone, no doubt, the Jesuit voice will continue to sound, to most ears, strange and discordant.

A genuine and effective option and solidarity with poor and marginalised; a genuine love and respect for the Catholic Church and willingness to trust and be guided by the Roman pontiff. For many, even some who believe or want to believe in Jesus, these two attitudes are incompatible.

Increasingly, the majority verdict of our day is that there is no salvation within the Church that attempts to reconcile Church and world are simply futile. But for the Jesuit, who seeks to 'find God in all things' (a motto which, admittedly, trips all too easily off the tongue) there are no God-free zones. Who is going to square the circle?

Michael Kirwan, SJ
Lecturer: Heythrop College, London